NIGHT WINDS OF ARABY

 

ARTHUR JOHN EARDLEY DAWSON:

SENSUALIST AND SOLDIER

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

 

‘A glance of tenderness from two brown eyes

That carries in its laughing wake

The darling pains of Paradise,

Bruising the heart until it seems ‘twould break.’

[Temptation. Night Winds of Araby. p. 38]

 

The soldier-poet, A. J. E. Dawson is a lost figure, belonging to an age of gentility ruptured by war; he left no memoirs except for his poetry and scenes scattered within his three published novels under the mysterious name – ‘Rajput’. The origins of his poetry go back to the pastoral verse in the age of uncertainty just before the outbreak of war, the juxtaposition of the beauty of nature with the horror and savagery of battle; the gallantry of duty and comradeship which forms between men fighting together. Dawson was exposing his feelings at a time when the manly perception of soldiering and warfare were not altogether acceptable, that sort of thing was left to scholars in dim college halls who waved youth off cheerfully to the Front. Yet, through the passage of time, Dawson’s poetry has the ability to speak to us today as we look upon the past in a different, more understanding light.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson’s father, Arthur John Frederick Dawson, J.P. was born in Ticehurst, Sussex on 3^rd November 1865; the younger son of the Rev. John Dawson (1825-1913), Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Weston-Super-Mare, and Mary Le Mesurier (1825-1912), daughter of the naval Captain Peter Collas of Guernsey, who were married on 27^th December 1848 (1). Arthur J. F. Dawson, who later became a member of the Badminton Club, Piccadilly, was educated at Weymouth College (1880-82) before going up to Edinburgh University. He emigrated to Ceylon in 1886 and became a tea and rubber planter and married Flora Cecilia Eardley Wilmot (1869-1907) in Tunbridge Wells, Kent on Thursday 25^th November 1897. Flora was the daughter of Vice Admiral Arthur Parry Eardley-Wilmot, CB, RN, (1815-1886) and Charlotte Louisa Mackenzie Wright (1837-1870) who were married on 28^th July 1868; Flora is also the niece of the politician, Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot (1810-1892), Bart.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson was born in Kandy, Ceylon, on Tuesday 3^rd January 1899.

 

In April 1911 we can find 12 year old Arthur living with his Aunt Edith Mary Walton Gilbert, nee Dawson (born 1855) and her husband, the Reverend Charles Robert Gilbert (1854-1919) at the Rectory in Seagrove, Loughborough in Leicestershire. (2) Reverend Gilbert, born 12^th July 1851 in Oxford, was educated at Rugby School and went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge in May of 1870 where he studied mathematics and took the Moral Sciences Tripos, (B.A. 1874, M.A. 1877). He was ordained deacon in Lichfield in 1875 and priest the following year; from 1875-78 he was the mathematical master at Derby Grammar School; Headmaster at Weymouth College, Dorset from 1879-1885; senior mathematical master at St. Peter’s School, York from 1885-90 and then Headmaster of King Henry VIII School, Coventry from 1890-1905 when he retired and went to Seagrove where he was Rector from 1906 until his death there on 17^th December 1919. I do not believe that Arthur was merely visiting his Aunt in Seagrove that April and it is perhaps the case that when Arthur’s mother, Flora died in 1907, young Arthur was sent to England to be cared for by his Aunt Edith and Uncle Charles in preparation for entering a good school and perhaps university. It is also very likely that the charged Christian atmosphere at the Rectory may have become quite intolerable to the young sensitive poet and he could have been thinking of his Uncle, Reverend Gilbert when he wrote: ‘Upon a battlefield far far away, / no matter where, so far away was it, / where no one tried to ram God down men’s throats / and make them take Him as a bitter pill.’ [The Difference II, Night Winds of Araby, p. 41]

Young Arthur Dawson entered Cheltenham College in January 1913, (3) boarding there at Boyne House; he was a member of the Football XV (1914-15) and he began writing poetry. His first published volume of poetry, ‘Poems by a Cheltonian’ was written whilst at Cheltenham College – it was published in March 1919 with a foreword by the College’s Principle, Reverend Reginald Waterfield (1867-1967) who could not help but praise the young poet under the ‘protecting wing’ of his dear College with lines that spoke of a son’s devotion to a parental institution – ‘content to worship at thy shrine, / for thou to all thy children art the same, / a mother worthy to be loved divine;’ (Cheltenham College I. Poems by a Cheltonian.) The sense of maternal longing is understandable when we realise that Arthur was only eight years old when on Friday 29^th March 1907, his mother, Flora died in Ceylon. The loss must have been great upon the sensitive child and we can only assume that his father, typical for a man of his time and standing, with various administration work to attend to, had great difficulty showing affection and became quite distant towards his son, sent to England to be educated. In fact, it was while young Arthur was at Cheltenham College that his father, Arthur John Frederick Dawson died at Rayigam, Padukka, Ceylon on Friday 10^th July 1914, yet another great blow to an already over-sensitive boy. Young Dawson held Cheltenham College dear to his heart and as an old boy he was a member of the Cheltonian Society. In July 1926 the Cheltonian Society held their Annual Dinner at London’s Trocadero Restaurant and Dawson was in attendance along with the retiring President, Mr. Ernest de S. H. Browne (1855-1946) and President elect, Sir Samuel Guise Guise-Moore (1863-1942), also the Headmaster of Cheltenham College, Mr. Henry Harrison Hardy (1882-1958) and Dawson’s old Principle, the Reverend Reginald Waterfield, now the Dean of Hereford. (4)

Dawson left Cheltenham College in April 1916 and on Tuesday 13^th June he travelled to Bombay, India; he joined the Cadet College at Quetta in Baluchistan, training for a commission in the British and Indian armies. He was commissioned the following year as a 2^nd Lieutenant on Tuesday 30^th January 1917 while in India and he joined the 2^nd Q.V.O. [Queen Victoria’s Own] Rajput Light Infantry of the Indian Army on Friday 9^th February 1917 and took part in various campaigns: Mesopotamia, 1918; Salonika, 1918; he was attached to the Army of the Black Sea, 1918-20; and Waziristan, 1921-22.

Dawson rose through the ranks in the 2^nd Rajputs, becoming a Lieutenant on Wednesday 30^th January 1918, Captain on Sunday 30^th January 1921 in the 7^th D.C.O. [Duke of Connaught’s Own] Rajput Regiment, and a Major on Wednesday 30^th January 1935. He was finally released from the army on Thursday 18^th September 1947, having reached the rank of Temporary Lieutenant Colonel. (5)

But life as a soldier had not diminished his light for writing poetry. His second published volume, ‘Night Winds of Araby’ of 1920 shows much promise in his verse, although I would suggest that there is much which could be considered ‘juvenilia’ and there are glaringly awkward and clumsy lines such as ‘for man is man, and no anaemic cry / will place him weathercock on high church spires’ in the poem ‘Lust’ (p. 25).

 

It is this book Night Winds of Araby, the name alone conjures up mystical desert scenes and tents glowing in the dunes beneath the moonlight that I wish to concentrate my attention on. The book contains thirty-three poems of various lengths, several of which are devotional love-lyrics, mostly drawn from his experiences in India. He describes quite vividly the ‘crowded thoroughfares and narrow streets’, the sounds and smells of the bazaar where we find a ‘fat old steamy merchant’ who ‘squats among / his laid-out foods…/ waving his hand to check the million flies / that puke their guts out on the melted sweets’; he then takes us from the filth of the vendors in their shop to the sordid delights of the wooden balconies above them, where ‘women of pleasure hold their sway and try / with many a wile to lure the passer by.’ [Bazaar Impression, p. 20] And in the poem Baghdad (p. 12) he conjures up the city for us, ‘like some pale lady wrapt in dreams / of subtle issue, magic charms; a stately, yet a ghostly sight.’ Around this most exotic lady, ‘minarets rise, / while all around a thousand palms / gaze in the Tigris as it gleams, / held captive in its snake-like arms.’ Dawson was certainly held captive by the ‘perfumed soul of night’, the city of Baghdad, strange and other-worldly to non-natives. India then, as it does now, had a mystical and magical quality about her, a ‘rugged silent land / of happenings strange, of rumours wild, suppressed.’ [Night on the Indian Frontier, p. 21] The poem, Night in Mesopotamia (p. 15) has some truly beautiful lines:

 

‘A quiver in the hot and breathless air

Like the faint frou-frou of a woman’s dress.

The restless sleepers turn, their bodies bare

To this babe spirit of the wilderness,

Whose frail, yet welcome hands damp brows caress,

Bringer of blessed sleep, dispelling care,

Until the pipings of the dawn express

Another day of blistering heat and glare.

 

There, now, beneath the open starlit dome

Come dreams that bloom and fade like fragile flowers;

To some the simple cries of hearth and home,

To others memories of gilded hours,

Maybe the fragrance of some Beauty’s bowers,

Far out of reach to wandering souls who roam.

 

There are the usual offerings a young poet makes in laying his heart bare in his declaration of love, even at the price of Death:

 

‘I sometimes think that Life would be sweet

If it would only grant me Death,

And let me sob my failing breath

While raining kisses on my lover’s feet;

For the Death’s honeyed pain would seem to me

Of all life’s gifts, the richest ecstasy.’

[Love, p. 11]

 

And depictions of the horrors of war which Dawson would have witnessed, as this scene in The Difference II (p. 41):

 

‘The Sepoy carried in his dusky arms

A mangled something that had once been Man,

A mangled something that had once been loved

And was loved now, as bitter anguish tears

Upon the rescuer’s face full testified.’

 

Dawson, who was only twenty-one when the book was published, sings of the joy of youth and its beauty – ‘Youth laughed aloud, and with his burning kiss / left broken hearts strewn out in wild array, / his longed-for love to mourn, his sweets to miss. / What mattered it? For youth will have its day.’ [Contrast, p. 28] The poem celebrates the care-free and immortal magnificence of being young, indulging his wild passions with death much too far away for concern; but life on the battlefield brought Death very near and ever-present. The poem also shows Dawson’s fascination with those youthful flowers of boyhood; in the poem Araby (p. 37) he sings of his ‘Dear little desert flower’ and remembers the ‘fragrance of a perfect hour’ and although he is a ‘wanderer in a far-off wild,’ he shall remember, and ‘sip once more / the joys that pour / like honey from thy petals, Child.’ In fact, there are undertones of the homoerotic in much of his verse, most of it quite obviously discernible, as in this, The Pathan (p. 17):

 

‘On Afgan’s frontier, once I saw a child

Still in his teens. His clear-cut face

Was beautiful, so were his eyes

That flashed, and seemed to hypnotize

The will and brain whene’er he smiled.

 

Then heard I that this creature of the wild

Belonged to man, his lawful prize.

By man, and man alone, defiled

He lives to ease the passion sighs

And longings of a sensual race.’ (6)

 

Dawson would have been quite familiar with the ‘longings of a sensual race’ and many of the poems show Dawson instinctively displaying a ‘fatherly’ protection towards the young soldiers – ‘Fain would I blend my thoughts with thine, / and join these widely separate fires, / tasting the nature of thy wine, / the secrets of thy youth’s desires.’ [To a Sepoy. p. 13] The next verse begins rather tellingly – ‘Mine is the power to command, / thine is the mission to obey.’ This dominant and submissive nature infused with delirious pain is invoked in the poem ‘Longing’ (p. 24)

 

‘Sweetheart! Link thy youth with mine,

Help me ease this fevered blood

Coursing through the veins like wine,

Bubbling in tumultuous flood.

Hurt me, Lover, with tiny kisses,

Drown me in delirious blisses.

 

See! An Eastern moon is nigh,

Climbing over yonder palms;

Angel! Take me, let me lie

Wildly happy in thine arms;

Dark-eyed Darling of my madness

Drink with me the Cup of Gladness!’

 

This ‘madness’ seems to creep over Dawson and arises again in the poem Lust (p. 25) in which he says ‘sometimes a madness breaks beneath the crust / of self respect and we no longer trust / the firmness of the ice about the brink / of human strength; nor is there time to think / of moral codes buried in heirloomed must.’ The poem goes on to say that the ‘fevered blood’ courses in this madness to ‘beat wildly to the honeyed stabs of lust.’ He then goes on to justify such, to others’ eyes, immoral behaviour of the ‘perfumed hour’, saying ‘who dare deny / fulfilment of the ever-smouldering fires; / ready to burst in flame should one apply / combustibles of man’s supreme desires?’ It is hard to believe that Dawson’s ‘supreme desires’ would need much combusting for he seems to fall at the feet of every handsome face he encounters – ‘Come once again / to me my sweet! / Don’t make me plead in vain. / Come, let me kiss those tiny hands and feet, / come, let us sip of love’s delirious pain;’ (Supplication. p. 23). And again in the poem, Jawan Hindoo (p. 43) which begins: ‘Fresh youth was his. No garden rose / E’er bloomed more sweetly. Strength and grace / bred in a country where the lotus grows / glowed in his limbs and handsome face.’ The poem continues in almost sadistic pleasure as he bids farewell to his ‘poor rose’, the young body of the Hindoo, placed upon a bonfire, ‘prone and inert’ in which the ‘flames increasing in desire / licked round his limbs and joined in ghastly play’. 

A similar justification for his desires can be found in the poem Femina (p. 31):

 

‘The world protests, my love, and I am glad,

For you are more than this vain world to me.

Just you and I. I would not have you clad

In shining garments of hypocrisy.

Why should I, when beneath the brink I see

The cool pure springs, and yet withal, so sad;

Condemned, because, some fools who think they’re free

Dare to decide ‘twixt what is good and bad.

 

If when, upon our beds, we weakening lie

Fair Conscience to the soul can give its rest,

What matters, then, the world? If, when we die

We feel that we have lived and done our best,

The soul according to its conscience cry

Will find, or fail to find, its Father’s breast.’

 

In The Price of Genius (pp. 44-46) he feels ‘night’s virgin breath / now fanning softly up against my cheek. / Come on, thou moon! I feel my heart strings beat / beneath the magic of thy master hand.’ (p. 45) surely the moon would have a ‘maiden hand’! In the same poem he equates ‘madness’, whether of the mind or of the body yearning towards an unfulfilled desire, with religious ecstasy – ‘let him live up to his temperament / so near he is to madness. Even I / then cannot hope to bind the bleeding soul / nor help to bear the awful crown of thorns, / brought on because the longings of his soul / are not in talliance with this cultured age.’ (p. 46) This spiritual ecstasy and ache in which nature only dulls and fails to soothe – ‘all is so beautiful, and I alone / am miserable in this bright-coloured world’… ‘my heart is like a wound / that I have borne about from place to place’ (p. 45) seems an echo from the first poem in the volume, The Voice (p. 9) in which the poet, believing he is alone in the brilliance of nature about him, suddenly hears ‘the melancholy of a native’s voice, / uplifted to the skies in wild appeal. / It seemed as if the yearnings of his soul / lay naked in these passionate utterances, / not meant for fellow listeners to hear / save Nature and the sombre-looking palms / who gazed on him, and bent their stately heads / to acquiesce in his barbaric song.’ The sense of intrusion upon something divine, no matter how ‘barbaric’, is something Dawson comes back to.

I find there are certain similarities in Dawson’s poetry with another soldier-poet, the Devonian, Raymond Heywood, who also took part in the Mesopotamia and Salonika campaigns and published two volumes of poetry – Roses, Pearls and Tears (London. Erskine Macdonald. 1918) and The Greater Love (London. Elkin Mathews. 1919). The mysterious Heywood, like Dawson, has a lyrical quality to his verse which resonates with a sense of longing, in Heywood’s case for the beauty of the Devon landscape – ‘tell me – do the roses blow / in the lanes down Devon way…’ (from The Greater Love), and in Dawson’s a desire for love, a desire that also becomes despair but both poets show a great passion in their paternal love for their fellow soldiers, as in this from Heywood:

 

‘O Boy o’ Mine, beneath the rose-hued skies,

Of other days I see your face again;

Life only leaves me tender memories,

And dear dead dreams that fill my heart with pain.

 

O boy o’ mine, how could I let you go,-

All that I held so dear: Nothing can tell

Of all you were to me – I only know

That when you went the evening shadows fell.

 

O boy o’ mine, the joy was only lent,

And you have nobly played a hero’s part,

Thro’ the dark night to your dear grave is sent

A Mother’s love, from my poor aching heart.’

 

[My Boy. Roses, Pearls and Tears. p. 36]

 

 

And this poem, ‘Selfishness’ (p. 26) of Dawson’s:

 

‘Yes, let me die. I ask no more than this,

While swooning mad with pleasure on thy breast.

Come, Death, and strike. The darling hour of bliss

Atones for any wrong in my behest.

 

An Eastern night of stars, of lofty palms;

Forgotten are the worries of to-day.

My youthful lover! Fold me in thine arms,

Dear heart-sick hours. Alas! Too sweet to stay.

 

Yes, let me die. I ask no more than this.

For as my soul wings upwards into space,

Enshrined will live the petals of a kiss,

The burning imprint of my Dream Child’s face.’

 

There is a darker element within Dawson’s poems which remain below the surface, a secret that he wishes to keep hidden – ‘If, one day longing trips me, and I tell / all that is in my heart, the growing fire / of Love consuming in unquenched desire, / would Life be then to me, a Heaven, or Hell?’ [Query, p. 29] whereas Heywood wears his romantic sentiments quite freely – ‘I scarce can think ‘twas yesterday / those laughing lads could laugh and sing, / for now their dead boy lips are grey, / and Devon has made her offering.’ An offering that will ‘make a music in my brain, / and haunt my heart for evermore.’ [Before Battle, The Greater Love] Both poets seem to have the same fascination with death and regret – ‘Perhaps the night wind in its gentle wake / leaves kisses on that rudely heaped-up mound.’ [The Enemy, p. 14, Dawson] and ‘The moonlight softly fell upon your bed, / (O God, I scarce can think that you are dead!) / And all my heart, and all the dreams I knew / I dreamed I saw a little cross of white, / a little lonely mound, so still and grey - / I only heard the sighing poplars sway.’ [By Sanctuary Wood. Roses, Pearls and Tears. p. 27] and again in Heywood’s ‘A Man’s Man’ from Roses, Pearls and Tears (p. 14) –

 

‘He was a man… I linger where his cross

Shines white among the shadows, and I know

My very soul is strengthened by my loss.

My comrade still in death – I loved him so.’

 

In Dawson’s Night March in Mesopotamia, (p. 10) we get a sense of that bond of comradeship as the soldiers march in an early morning mystical silence and the poet implores: ‘Let us live this hour, / wrapped up in loveliness. Just you and I / who understand, and marching, feel the boon / of Nature’s sweetness, hear her quivering sigh / ere we attack at dawn, and brave men die.’

 

When not writing poetry or pursuing the pleasures of the East, Dawson enjoyed the sport of lawn tennis and became quite an accomplished player, taking part in Army championships – in February 1927 he took part in the singles and doubles Army Lawn Tennis Championship held in Lahore, Pakistan. He was also quite prominent in civilian tennis tournaments too: in August-September 1922 ‘Captain A. J. E. Dawson and Miss F. Player beat L. A. Roper and Mrs. D. S. F. Jones, 6-1, 7-5,’ in the third round of the Open Mixed Doubles lawn tennis at Hastings (7). Also in September that year he partook in the Bexhill Lawn Tennis Club’s ninth Tournament in the Gentlemen’s Open Doubles, the Men’s Open Singles and the Open Mixed Doubles (8). He also played in the Felixstowe Autumn Lawn Tennis Tournament which began on Monday 27^th September 1926 in the singles and doubles rounds (9). A few years later, in the 18^th Annual Hastings and St. Leonard’s Lawn Tennis Tournament, held at the Central Cricket Ground, in August 1929, ‘Captain A. J. E. Dawson, who recently returned from India, had a hard fight with D. H. Raebura, winning in three sets, 6-2, 2-6, 2-6.’ in the first round of the Gentlemen’s Singles. (10)

 

Dawson’s third and final volume of poetry, ‘Children of Circumstance’ appeared in 1921 which contains a lyrical expression to soldierly feelings of English patriotism and love much on the same lines as Araby dating from Anatolia, Constantinople and India in 1920; Dawson reflects on the various common features of East and West religions and draws upon his own experiences in Persia and Mesopotamia in the form of lullabies and love songs. The Bookman of October 1921 (p. 40) said that Dawson was a ‘poet grafted on to a man of facts, who is candid about himself’. The article goes on to say that ‘cruelty, just, disease, filth, the sorcery of the East, the whips of starving sensuality, impassion him as spectator or experiencer. He does not minutely describe, but one feels that there is a cave in his memory, which is a museum of horrors, while there is another cave too delightful for words.’ The review is rather mixed though perhaps fairly accurate and ends with the strangely vague – ‘his book tingles with emotional life and creates a kind of remorse if one lingers long at its weak passages.’ Surely these are the defects we encounter in a minor poet and in many instances can be forgiven. Whether or not the poor reviews had their effect, ‘Children of Circumstance’ was Dawson’s final volume of poetry and he turned his hand to novel writing under the pseudonym, ‘Rajput’; his first novel, ‘Khyber Calling!’ (1938) was published seventeen years after the disappointing appearance of Children of Circumstance, and it tells the intimate story of an Indian Frontier soldier, a Company Commander who had served for many years in India, and the political conditions and adventures of the British Army in the region of the Khyber Pass. Lt-Colonel Dawson – ‘Rajput’ had been stationed at Banna, Waziristan at the time of publication and he drew on his experiences of the perimeter camps with their stone walls and barbed wire fences; the many night alarms and the building of roads through hostile territory, the ambushes and the monotonous boredom of these inter-war camps. The story opens with the murder of an unarmed Ghurkha mule-driver killed by pathans and the column of men sent out to deal with it. Dawson depicts his characters well, such as the Colonel of the battalion and Suleiman Khan, his Subadar [Indian officer], and Firoze Din, his orderly and he brings to life the feelings and conversations of those soldiers serving in the North-West Frontier. Dawson’s next novel was ‘Indian River’ the following year in 1939 while Dawson was at Bexhill-on-Sea; the novel tells of the struggle against the Caste system and its importance to the people of India. His final novel was ‘The Advancing Years’ in 1941 which is the story of an Indian Regiment interwoven by romance. They were hardly ever going to be his lasting legacy and there is no doubt that there are some significant passages within them which would appeal to a certain readership. After the novels, Dawson simply fades away, there is very little information concerning the poet – there is a record of him travelling with Thomas Cook & Sons on the S.S. Lurline to Los Angeles, California from San Pedro for a short time to visit a cousin in April 1936 when he was 37 years old; the record gives his last address as Secunderabad, India and his nearest relative or friend as Bryan Phillips, 7^th Rajput, Secunderabad (11) and then he leaves the Indian Army on Thursday 18^th September 1947 and then silence.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson died in Hastings, East Sussex, in the spring of 1981, and although he is almost now forgotten, belonging to a bygone age, permit me to cast a small stone into the still water and see if the ripples touch anyone gently enough to pursue his minor, yet sensitive, poetic gift.

 

‘Let me walk

Tip-toe adown the paths of long ago

To where, now faded in the curtained gloom

Lies a fair picture that was once so bright

Of Love and Youth transfigured in their Hopes:

Now, Love is dead, and as we take a flower

Of curious mien, and place it in a book,

So I have carried it against my heart

Up the long staircase of the winding years.

And youth is dying as the ripening bud

Bursts forth in flower in the waiting world.

All that remains is Hope’s young flame, and she

Grows stranger as the weakening days grow old,

For Life is Hope, and when Hope fails, we die.

 

Play on, great Bard! Nor check thy passion yet;

Like scorched fields browned by summer’s blazing heat

We ope our stalks to thy refreshing dews

And drink their sweetness with out thankful hearts.’

[Effect of Music, Night Winds of Araby. pp. 34-35]

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

Poems By A Cheltonian. [poems] Written whilst at Cheltenham College, with a foreword by the Rev. R. Waterfield. London. C. W. Daniel. March 1919. pp. 43.

 

Night Winds Of Araby. [poems] London. Grant Richards. April 1920. Printed by William Brendon and Son, Ltd. Plymouth. 8vo. pp. 46.

 

Children Of Circumstance. [poems] London. Grant Richards. August 1921. 8vo. pp. 93.

 

Khyber Calling! An Account of Military Life on the North-West Frontier of India. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. September 1938. 8vo. pp. 268.

 

Indian River. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. October 1939. C8. pp. 288.

 

The Advancing Years. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. May 1941. 8vo. pp. 256.

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. John and Mary Dawson had the following children: (a) Rev. Canon Edwin Collas Dawson, M.A. born 28^th November 1849 in Esher, Surrey and educated at Tonbridge School and St Mary’s Hall, Oxford in 1868, B.A. 1871, M.A. 1876; he was ordained in Newport, Isle of Wight in 1873 and went to Edinburgh in 1878. He was the author of several books, including a Life of Hannington (1887) and Rector of St. Thomas’s Church, Edinburgh in 1883; Rector of St. Peter’s Church, Lutton, Northamptonshire and later Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh. He married Lucy Mackinley Munro Wyllie (1854-1917) in Elham, Kent on 17^th March 1877 and they had two children: Reverend Robert (Roy) Basil Dawson 1877-1940, and the celebrated Scottish artist, Mabel Dawson 1878-1965 who studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and was a member of the Society of Scottish Artists (1907) and the Royal Scottish Water Colour Society (1917). Canon Edwin Collas Dawson died in Edinburgh on 17^th March 1925, aged 75. (b) Julia Neville Dawson, born in Hertfordshire on 3^rd July 1851; she married French-born Reverend Ludovic Charles Andre Mouton (1846-1895) of Wadham College, Oxford (1868) who was Rector of Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. They had seven children and Julia died in St. Leonard’s on 14^th October 1899. (c) Edith Mary Walton Dawson, born in Surrey in 1855; she married Reverend Charles Robert Gilbert (1854-1919) who was the mathematical master at Derby Grammar School at the time, at St Peter’s Church, Clifton by her brother, Reverend E. C. Dawson and her brother-in-law, Reverend L. C. Manton. They had several children (Marion Edith Gilbert 1879, Ethel C. Gilbert 1880, Muriel A. B. Gilbert 1881) and Edith died in Battle, Sussex in 1936 aged 80. (d) Alice Emma Dawson, born in Ticehurst, Sussex in 1859; Alice never married and she was the author of several articles on art – ‘Meditations in National Gallery’ in the Illustrated Berwick Journal (Thursday 12^th, 19^th and 26^th June 1924, p. 2) and she died in Battle, Sussex, in 1945 aged 86. (e) Harriette Anne de Venoix Dawson born in Sussex in 1862, she married the widow Reverend William Henry Wayne (1832-1920) in Axbridge, Somerset in 1893; William’s previous marriage to Eliza Foskett occurred in November 1856 (before his bride, Harriette, was born) and several of his children were older and of similar age to Harriette Dawson. Reverend Wayne was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (1852-56) and ordained in 1856; he had an interest in art and collected old silver, china (English) and pictures and died at Willey Rectory on 17^th July 1920 [A Shropshire Vicar, Memoir of Rev. W. H. Wayne. Shrewsbury Chronicle. Friday 30^th July 1920. p. 5]. Harriette wrote books for children under the name Aimee de V Dawson: The Happy Childhood of Two Little Girls (1888), Dorothy’s Clock (1888), A Peep into Cat-Land (1890), How Daisy Became a Sunbeam (1893), Grandmother’s Forget-Me-Nots: A Story for Girls (1893), Nobody’s Pet: A Story of Brother and Sister (1894) and He, She, and It: A Story for Young Children (1894). Harriette died on 12^th January 1949 in Sussex aged 87. (f) Then of course, Arthur John Frederick Dawson was born in 1865.

2. 1911 Census for England and Wales taken on Sunday 2^nd April 1911. RG14, Schedule Type: 17, Piece/Folio: 33, Page 1.

3. Cheltenham College Register, 1841-1927, edited by Edward Scot Skirving. 1928. p. 658.

4. The Cheltonian Society Annual Dinner took place on Tuesday 6^th July 1926. Cheltenham Chronicle. Saturday 10^th July 1926. p. 2.

5. British Library: Asian and African Studies, 1918-47. Dawson, Arthur John Eardley, Indian Army Number: I.A. 959. Reference: 10R/L/MIL/14/94.

6. Also found in Love in Earnest (London. Routledge & K. Paul. 1970) by Timothy D’Arch Smith. p. 143.

7. Westminster Gazette. Friday 1^st September 1922. p. 10.

8. The 9^th Bexhill Lawn Tennis Tournament commenced on Monday 4^th September 1922 and in the first round of the Gentlemen’s Open Doubles, Captain A. J. E. Dawson and C. W. Moore beat M. K. Jackson and W. D. Jackson, 6-0, 6-1. In the second round Dawson and Moore beat P. W. B. Butcher and C. Simmons, 6-2, 6-3; in the 3^rd round A. T. Hill and F. H. Jarvis beat Dawson and Moore, 5-7, 6-4, 6-0. In the Men’s Open Singles in the 2^nd round, A. T. Hill beat Captain Dawson, 6-0, 6-2. In the Open Mixed Doubles, 1^st round, C. G. Jenner and Mrs. Bates beat Captain Dawson and Miss R. Taunton, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4. Dawson also took part in the Gentlemen’s Singles Handicap (class A), 1^st round: Captain A. J. E. Dawson beat Captain E. S. R. Milton, 6-4, 8-6; in the 2^nd round Captain  W. M. Sherring beat Captain Dawson, 6-2, 6-4. Bexhill-on-Sea Chronicle. Saturday 9^th September 1922. p. 7.

9. Felixstowe Autumn Lawn Tennis Tournament, beginning Monday 27^th September 1926. In the 1^st round of the Men’s Level Singles played on Monday 27^th, Captain A. J. E. Dawson beat R. Pretty, 6-4, 6-3. In the 2^nd round the following day, G. Thompson beat Captain Dawson, 6-4, 6-3. In the 1^st round of the Men’s Level Doubles (Wednesday 29^th), Captain A. J. E. Dawson and W. R. B. Cuthbertson beat F. Lt. H. M. Massey and H. A. C. Williams, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3. In the 2^nd round, Captain Dawson and Cuthbertson beat A. B. Learmouth and E. B. Greenwall, 6-0, 6-0. In the 3^rd round, L. A. Godfrey and E. A. Dearman beat Captain Dawson and Cuthbertson, 6-1, 6-3. he also took part in the Ladies Mixed Doubles and in the 2^nd round, G. R. O. Crole-Rees and Mrs. M. Watson beat Captain Dawson and Miss E. M. Aitken, 6-1, 6-3. Felixstowe Times. Saturday 2^nd October 1926. p. 7.

10. The 18^th Annual Hastings and St. Leonard’s Lawn Tennis Tournament began on Monday 26^th August 1929 at midday. Hastings and St. Leonard’s Observer. Saturday 31^st August 1929. p. 11.

11. Passenger Lists, 1907-1948. Index to passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Pedro/Wilmington/Los Angeles, California. Affiliate Film Number: Roll 2; Affiliate Publication Number: M1763; Digital Folder Number: 007721657; Image Number: 7599.